Obama administration determined to stop Petraeus testimony on Benghazi attack.

[layoutshooter]

The "Answer" will remain "classified" until all those who caused the problem are dead. Just as with "Carter's Mess". It are how it are. Those slimy politicians are VERY good at CYA, ALL of them!

 

[RLENT]

Petreaus apparently signed off on it, but it has to be scrutinized in the context of what was happening at the time. At the time he knew he was under investigation by the FBI.

Really ?

At what point/date - specifically - did he become aware that he was under investigation ?

I'm assuming that you actually know something here ... and aren't just talking out of your *** once again ...

Of course, that may be a very big assumption ...

BTW - where was this reported ?

 

[layoutshooter]

Just because it was not reported does not mean that it did not happen. Seen FAR too many things happen that were either not reported or "misreported" (lied about). Politicians, of ALL parties, protect themselves from accepting responsibility of their own actions. ALL of them. It are how it are. It is MUCH better to lie and blame those who were subordinate to them.

 

[davekc]

Just because it was not reported does not mean that it did not happen. Seen FAR too many things happen that were either not reported or "misreported" (lied about). Politicians, of ALL parties, protect themselves from accepting responsibility of their own actions. ALL of them. It are how it are. It is MUCH better to lie and blame those who were subordinate to them.

Goes on all the time. As for the Petreaus mess, most of what I have seen says he knew in July or August depending on the source.
One of many.
Timeline of the Petraeus affair - CNN.com

 

[layoutshooter]

Liars are liars. Rumbumlicans are Demoncrats. You get what you pay for.

 

[RLENT]

I'm sure there was since several knew of his affair before all of this hit.

Who knew of his affair ?

And when did they know ?

What is the source of that information ?

Really just common sense.
Hardly need the understanding of "process or the bureaucracy" to figure that out.

When one has a fertile imagination - and deals with primarily in fantasy and self-delusion - understanding of relevant facts and reality are never required ...

Some people make it a point to "figure things out" obsessively ... constant figure, figure, figure ... all while often ignoring actual facts and circumstances which are relevant to the matter which they are compu-tat-ing on ...

A recent good example of this phenomenon is Dick "Landslide" Morris ...

Another good example might be a good portion of the Romney campaign, as well as the candidate himself ...

And another would be a good portion of the Republican voter base, who largely thought like ol' "Landslde" did ...

Additionally, they quite often indulge in any manner of logical fallacies in order to arrive at their conclusions. It is one thing to knowingly use a logical fallacy in an attempt to prevail in a debate or argument ... it is something entirely different to incorporate it as part of one's normal thought processes however ...

More will come out.

I'm quite sure more will come out ... in fact, I actually look forward to it - largely because it may well make some folks look even more stupid than they already do ...

However, what I suspect won't come out is a "smoking gun" ... likely because like unicorns, fairies, and dragons, it probably does not exist ...

One of the things which will probably come out fairly shortly is this:

FBI prepares timeline of Petraeus investigation as Congress questions timing of notification

What may well make that particularly delicious, is the fact that a few clowns here are already on record with some degree of specificity in regard to what will be contained in that timeline.

Of course, when what is contained in that timeline disagrees with what they have previously put forward (which is largely based on their own computations and not actual evidence or facts) they will then do more computation and very likely cry "cover up" ...

Such are the mechanisms and practices of the delusional ...

Took two and half months to squeeze out what they got so far.

Maybe you sure write 'em and tell 'em they should employ the Dave Corfman magic "Easy Button":

​

Of course, use of that device requires residence in an alternate universe ...​

Probably take another as there are still many open questions. But the good news is that answers are coming daily now.

Heheheh ... I suspect that given what the answers actually are, that has been, and is likely to continue to be, a rather unfulfilling experience ...

 

[RLENT]

Goes on all the time. As for the Petreaus mess, most of what I have seen says he knew in July or August depending on the source.
One of many.
Timeline of the Petraeus affair - CNN.com

Thank you for providing a clear example of exactly what I was referring to in my last post.

The fact of the matter is that if one examines the timeline that you offered one can easily see that it does not say Petraeus knew he was under investigation in July or August.

IOW, you can't get there from there ...

At least not without "computing" in the manner that I previously described.

At the very best, the only real evidence that the article provides that he knew he was under investigation is the following:

"FBI investigators interview Petraeus. There's disagreement over the date. The Washington Post reports it's October 29."

(I've also seen October 25 or 26 IIRC, as a date for the interview)

And even that assumes that the interview was conducted in such a manner that it would have made him aware that he (and not someone else) was actually under investigation himself - since no actual details of the interview are provided (something that I would consider pretty likely, given the fact that the interview occurs late in the investigation)

There is a condition which is part of the human condition ... it varies from individual to individual ... and some people are far more inclined to suffer from it than others ...

A brief, simplistic characterization of that condition is:

... putting something there that doesn't actually exist, and then believing that it actually does (exist) ...

Unfortunately for some, it makes for a nearly terminal condition ... of stupidity ...

 

[RLENT]

Just because it was not reported does not mean that it did not happen.

That's true ... although it begs the question of how someone - particularly someone here - would have actual knowledge of the matter unless it had been reported, short of direct personal involvement in the matter themselves ...

BTW - you read any good Obama stories on FrontPageMag lately that you wanna share ?

 

[RLENT]

The "Answer" will remain "classified" until all those who caused the problem are dead. Just as with "Carter's Mess". It are how it are. Those slimy politicians are VERY good at CYA, ALL of them!

Or it could be that the "Answer" (that never was) will eventually turn out to be an urban legend ... sorta like that whole "giving LSD/acid to kindergartners" thing ...

 

[RLENT]

The following article, which came out yesterday evening, speaks to the issue I referred to earlier, in regards to King David:

Petraeus Fell for the Wrong Reason

Written by Sheldon Richman
Tuesday, 20 November 2012 18:45

David Petraeus has fallen — but not as he should have. Before being disgraced by an extramarital affair, the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director should have been shamed out of public life for his horrendous military record in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Are we talking about the same David Petraeus who is said to have heroically saved Iraq with the famous surge and then salvaged a floundering military effort in Afghanistan?

That’s the one. But those “accomplishments” are merely the products of sharp public relations.

The fact is that Petraeus presided over the brutal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with torture, terrifying night raids, and violent sectarian cleansing. If Americans knew the truth — which the news media are uninterested in disclosing because it detracts from their narrative — they would not see heroism in David Petraeus. They would see the villainy of a man who carries out the orders of his imperial superiors and the ruthlessness with which the American empire treats whoever gets in its way. Alas, unfaithfulness in his marriage is the least of Petraeus’s offenses.

Journalist Eric Margolis, who has vast experience covering the Middle East, notes that

Petraeus and his fellow generals used every weapon in the US arsenal against Iraq’s eleven resistance groups (deceptively misnamed “al-Qaida” by Washington), including the mass ethnic cleansing of two million Sunni Iraqis, death squads, torture, and brutal reprisals....

Petraeus was then sent to work his magic in Afghanistan before returning to Washington to head CIA. There, the brainy general, who had a knack for self-promotion and public relations, tried again to crush the Pashtun resistance by massive bombardments, billions in high tech gear, reprisals that wiped out entire villages, search and destroy missions.

What’s to show for all this? A quagmire, still with high levels of violence, that the U.S. military will be stuck in for at least another decade. Yes, President Obama says the troops will be out in 2014, but that does not mean all of them or that the entanglement will end then.

Another eminent journalist, Gareth Porter of the Inter Press Service, has mined the WikiLeaks revelations, which document that under Petraeus’s command, U.S. forces were ordered not to investigate Iraqi-on-Iraqi killings and torture. Worse, U.S. troops turned prisoners over to the Iraqis knowing that they would be tortured.

“The deeper significance of the order ... is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi’a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war,” writes Porter. “The strategy [developed by Petraeus] involved the deliberate deployment of Shi’a and Kurdish police commandos in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by WikiLeaks show.”

This was known as the El Salvador option: training and equipping death squads to eradicate undesirables. This was the period when sectarian violence and Sunni resistance to the U.S. occupation were at their height. Every day, large numbers of tortured bodies were found on Baghdad streets as vengeful Shi’a Muslims, backed by America and Iran, engaged in sectarian cleansing of the city. Porter notes that the Bush-Cheney-Petraeus strategy was “a major contributing factor to the rise of al-Qaeda’s influence in the Sunni areas. The escalating Sunni-Shi’a violence it produced led to the massive sectarian warfare of 2006 in Baghdad in which tens of thousands of civilians — mainly Sunnis — were killed.”

As Porter recounts, two years earlier the Civil Defense Corps in Sunni areas of Iraq “essentially disappeared overnight during an insurgent offensive” and Petraeus’s U.S. command turned to Shi’a and Kurdish police and military units to put down the resistance. Soon the U.S. order not to intervene in the abuse of prisoners was issued. “It was a clear signal that the U.S. command expected torture of prisoners to be a central feature of Iraqi military and police operations against Sunni insurgents,” Porter writes. From there the American force established and trained sectarian paramilitary squads for the dirty work, the first being the Wolf Brigade. “It did not take long for the Wolf Brigade to acquire its reputation for torture of Sunni detainees,” Porter writes.

That is David Petraeus’s legacy.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va.

Petraeus Fell for the Wrong Reason

 

[muttly]

Goes on all the time. As for the Petreaus mess, most of what I have seen says he knew in July or August depending on the source.
One of many.
Timeline of the Petraeus affair - CNN.com

Yes, it makes sense he knew of the investigation back in July. Note the timeline when it says Petreaus and Broadwell ended the relationship? In JULY . I doubt it is just a coincidence that they just happen to end it the very month of the start of the investigation. He most likely was approached very early on, once the FBI determined he was involved. Makes no sense to have the FBI not talk to him for up to four months from the start of the investigation. This was a possible security breach matter and the FBI would need to get information from Petreaus himself right away instead of delay talking to him. If he was interviewed like the time line said in late October, it more likely was a FINAL interview they had with him. A wrap up the investigation interview.
Petreaus was also good friends with Jill Kelley and her family. It is very reasonable to believe she contacted him about the e-mails early on. So the matter of Petreaus easily knowing of the investigation by Sept 13th is tight.

Krauthammer: WH 'Held Affair Over Petraeus' Head' For Favorable Testimony On Benghazi - 'Benghazi-gate' - Fox Nation

 

[RLENT]

Yes, it makes sense he knew of the investigation back in July. Note the timeline when it says Petreaus and Broadwell ended the relationship? In JULY . I doubt it is just a coincidence that they just happen to end it the very month of the start of the investigation.

Yeah ... there couldn't possibly be any other reason that Petraeus ended it ...

Do you notice the difference between my phrasing and your's - regarding who ended it ?

Think about that for a little bit ... and in the meantime I'll tell you a little story:

When my youngest son - who was/is a fairly handsome lad BTW (gets it from his mother ) - was about 15 or 16 or so, he had a young lady who was interested in him. He asked her to a highschool dance and I got the task of picking her up and driving the both of them to the dance.

She was apparently from a somewhat poor family - a fact that was pretty evident when we arrived to pick her up. My son went up to the house, let her know that we were there, and then escorted her back to the car.

I had never met her before and was quite astonished when she got in the car: she was a total goddess ... good for him !

We (wife and I) talked with her on the way to the dance and she accorded herself very well - she seemed like a very nice young lady, quite courteous and well-spoken. Even better ...

Within a week after the dance my son, who is extremely independent, dropped her like a hot potato ... wouldn't even take her calls ... which were numerous ...

Why ?

Waaaay toooo needy and controlling ...

Now ask yourself this ... do Paula Broadwell's actions vis-a-vis her "emails" to Kelly sound to you like someone who is secure in her illicit relationship with Petraeus ?

Or do they sound like someone who has, at some earlier point, gotten the cold shoulder from her lover ... and who now is feeling threatened and is desperately searching for the reason that her lover has changed his attitude towards her ?

If Broadwell's "threatening" emails to Kelly started in May, it is likely (in my estimation) that something was either very seriously amiss, or it was actually over (maybe in all but the formal announcement) in the Broadwell/Petraeus relationship at that point ... or even earlier ...

If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Petraeus - who certainly is not a total idiot - probably came to the conclusion somewhere along the way, that the potential downsides to his conduct were really starting to outweigh the fleeting pleasures ...

IOW: the future was no longer looking so bright that he needed to wear shades ...

Of course, one can postulate a different scenario - one where Broadwell just likes to send threatening emails to some person she doesn't even actually know - who is physically a thousand miles away from her lover - for no real reason, other than that's just how she gets her kicks ...

 

[bobwg]

The following article, which came out yesterday evening, speaks to the issue I referred to earlier, in regards to King David:



Petraeus Fell for the Wrong Reason

Sheldon Richman??? who is he?? whats his agenda??? the future of freedom foundation?? really and what is this groups agenda??? So only the word of this person of what he claims ?? and then there is RLents agenda

 

[davekc]

When one has a fertile imagination - and deals with primarily in fantasy and self-delusion - understanding of relevant facts and reality are never required ...

Some people make it a point to "figure things out" obsessively ... constant figure, figure, figure ... all while often ignoring actual facts and circumstances which are relevant to the matter which they are compu-tat-ing on ...

A recent good example of this phenomenon is Dick "Landslide" Morris ...

Another good example might be a good portion of the Romney campaign, as well as the candidate himself ...

And another would be a good portion of the Republican voter base, who largely thought like ol' "Landslde" did ...

Additionally, they quite often indulge in any manner of logical fallacies in order to arrive at their conclusions. It is one thing to knowingly use a logical fallacy in an attempt to prevail in a debate or argument ... it is something entirely different to incorporate it as part of one's normal thought processes however ...


I'm quite sure more will come out ... in fact, I actually look forward to it - largely because it may well make some folks look even more stupid than they already do ...

However, what I suspect won't come out is a "smoking gun" ... likely because like unicorns, fairies, and dragons, it probably does not exist ...





What may well make that particularly delicious, is the fact that a few clowns here are already on record with some degree of specificity in regard to what will be contained in that timeline.

Of course, when what is contained in that timeline disagrees with what they have previously put forward (which is largely based on their own computations and not actual evidence or facts) they will then do more computation and very likely cry "cover up" ...

Such are the mechanisms and practices of the delusional ...


Maybe you sure write 'em and tell 'em they should employ the Dave Corfman magic "Easy Button":

​

Of course, use of that device requires residence in an alternate universe ...​

You and Dick "landslide" Morris apparently enjoy the same comical ailment. He thought Romney would win in a landslide and you actually thought for a longer period of time that Ron Paul would be president.
Pretty good tho for a morning laugh.

 

[RLENT]

Sheldon Richman??? who is he?? whats his agenda??? the future of freedom foundation?? really and what is this groups agenda???

Well, that's your homework assignment for the day - after you research it, please get back to us with your report ... and then we'll review it and give you your final grade ...

So only the word of this person of what he claims ??

Nope - apparently you have a little reading comprehension problem - either that or you weren't bright enough to actually read the article before you decided to spew off the nonsense that I'm currently replying to ...

If you had read it, then you'd already know that both Eric Margolis and Gareth Porter have weighed in on the matter - but they certainly aren't the only critical voices out there (as you are about to find out )

Further, Gareth Porter mined the USG's own documents that were released by Wikileaks, to make his case ... so essentially, out it's own mouth and by its own words, the USG condemns itself.

and then there is RLents agenda

Yup ... which is certainly not to be an apologist for, and boot-licker of, the Empire ...

And then of course there is your agenda ... which just might be to be both ...

 

[RLENT]

Here ya go Bubby ... lots of links below for ya explore and further your edja-mu-cation:

Petraeus’s COIN Gets Flipped

The general's counterinsurgency doctrine is as disgraced as he is.

By KELLEY VLAHOS • November 19, 2012

During the course of the developing scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, his biographer Paula Broadwell, Gen. John Allen, and Tampa social planner Jill Kelley, one journalist on Twitter, Max Fisher, commented that he was “having a tough time understanding why Petraeus’s scandal means that counterinsurgency doesn’t work.”

To which a prominent think tanker who spent much time in the field advising the former Gen. Stanley McChrystal on his counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, Andrew Exum, added, “the scandal quickly became an excuse for everyone to grind their favored policy-related axes: Iraq, Afghanistan, COIN, drones…” Another national-security writer, Peter Munson, responded almost immediately: “while not germane to validity of COIN, I do think the scandal has much to say about national security dysfunction writ large.”

Exactly — while the sex scandal and whatever else may come out of this hot mess may not be “germane” to whether COIN worked in Afghanistan (the prevailing view today is that it did not), this is an opportunity to talk frankly about counterinsurgency. Now dethroned, Petraeus and his war policy are fair game.

“First, even if Petraeus eventually gets somewhat rehabilitated and doesn’t disappear from public life, these events will puncture the image of a superhuman general that he has carefully cultivated over the years,” writes Stephen Walt, a longtime critic of the Bush and Obama foreign policies. ”More importantly, this embarrassing personal failure will open the door to a more toughminded and dispassionate look at his actual record in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his brief tenure as CIA head.”

Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter largely responsible for General McChrystal’s firing from his post as commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, was quick to trigger such a conversation last week. As a former embed in Iraq, Hastings has criticized how the cult of Petraeus was used to sell the Surge and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. He recalled how Petraeus became the greatest of all “celebrity generals,” not by winning wars, but by cultivating compliant journalists who gave him glowing coverage in the press. As a result, the counter-narrative — that the tide had started turning against the insurgents in Iraq before the “Surge” in 2007, that COIN was failing in Afghanistan, and that the Taliban wasnot losing traction — was conveniently lost in the din of hero-worship and runaway military idolatry (see Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor’s “Epitaph for a Four Star”). Writes Hastings:

The fraud that General David Petraeus perpetrated on America started many years before the general seduced Paula Broadwell … More so than any other leading military figure, Petraeus’ entire philosophy has been based on hiding the truth, on deception, on building a false image. “Perception” is key, he wrote in his 1987 Princeton dissertation: “What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more than what actually occurred.”

Yes, it’s not what actually happens that matters — it’s what you can convince the public it thinks happened. Until this weekend, Petraeus had been incredibly successful in making the public think he was a man of great integrity and honor, among other things.
​

Wired‘sSpencer Ackerman, who has a sound reputation as a thoughtful and fair national security writer, came forward and actually confessed he had fallen under the Petraeus spell as a war correspondent and analyst. In an admirable fit of journalistic honesty, Ackerman explained:

To be clear, none of this was the old quid-pro-quo of access for positive coverage. It worked more subtly than that: the more I interacted with his staff, the more persuasive their points seemed. Nor did I write anything I didn’t believe or couldn’t back up — but in retrospect, I was insufficiently critical … Another irony that Petraeus’ downfall reveals is that some of us who egotistically thought our coverage of Petraeus and counterinsurgency was so sophisticated were perpetuating myths without fully realizing it.
​

Military writers like Andrew Bacevich, Col. Gian Gentile, Carl Prine, and Macgregor have been charting the counterinsurgency myth for sometime. But the “end of COIN” narrative accelerated over the last year, with thoughtful postmortem analyses of the Iraq Surge and its ill-fated exportation to Afghanistan (See: Joshua Rovner’s “The Heroes of COIN”).

And the floodgates of mainstream criticism opened last week, some remarks taking on an almost funereal tone: ”The disgrace of David Petraeus has ended more than a great military career. It is also the symbolic end of a major chapter in American security strategy,” wrote Time‘s Michael Crowley. “The fall of the former Iraq and Afghanistan commander adds a tawdry exclamation point to the decline of counterinsurgency, the military theory for which Petraeus offered a heroic public face.”

Crowley explained that “even before he was sworn in as CIA director in September 2011, Petraeus was bending the rules of his own doctrine in Afghanistan,” relying more on air strikes and night raids than the hearts-and-minds, “all of government” exercises he had touted back in 2009. ”By the end of his career — in a country exhausted by war and slashing its budget — Petraeus had embraced that shift,” Crowley continued. “He had lowered his profile too far to become the drone war’s public face. But to those watching closely, the Petraeus Doctrine had morphed into something different. Counterinsurgency was finished. Much like the general’s career.”

Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd felt liberated enough to compare the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle to the Cult of Petraeus circa 2009:

Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in Afghanistan, just as, half a century earlier, the C.I.A. had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside their own doubts and instincts, caving to experience. Once in Afghanistan, Petraeus welcomed prominent conservative hawks from Washington think tanks. As Greg Jaffe wrote in The Washington Post, they were “given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.”
So many more American kids and Afghanistan civilians were killed and maimed in a war that went on too long. That’s the real scandal.
​

Jed Babbin, former George H.W Bush defense official and writer for The American Spectator, joined a chorus of writers on both sides of the political spectrum who now dismiss the “success” in Iraq as though this has come to be the conventional wisdom. How times have changed! Notes Babbin:

Petraeus leaves as an historic figure whose legacy is not as bright as many people say. His counterinsurgency strategy didn’t defeat the enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan. It merely propped up tinfoil regimes that will either turn to be our enemies — as in Iraq — or will fall quickly and be replaced with enemies we’d fought before, as in Afghanistan.
​

Of course, there are plenty of establishment writers who still insist Petraeus “won” Iraq but mucked the whole thing up in Afghanistan. One wonders where they were years ago when it was clear COIN was a disaster, starting with the replacement of poor Gen. David McKiernan with the COIN-friendly McChrystal, the showy summer 2009 Marine offensive, and then the disappointing 2010 Marjah operation, which brought to us the cringe-worthy promise of a “government in a box.“

Meanwhile, hardline neoconservatives who never quite warmed to post-Bush humanitarian interventionism are turning on their hero at last. While Diana West is hardly the best messenger, her complaints about how COIN’s “population centric” dictum did not translate well for the complexities of the Afghan battlefield are nevertheless widely shared in the military community.

COIN doctrine approaches war from an ivory tower, a place where such theories thrive untested and without hurting anyone. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the results have been catastrophic. Tens of thousands of young Americans answered their country’s call and were told to accept more “risk” and less “protection.” Many lost lives, limbs and pieces of their brains as a result of serving under a military command structure and government in thrall to a leftist ideology that argues, in defiance of human history, that cultures, beliefs and peoples are all the same, or want to be.
​

West’s Islamophobia, as usual, gets in the way of a cogent argument (amputations due to IEDs, including the newer “dismounted complex blast injuries,” had risen in 2011, even while Petraeus was testifying to the contrary). But there is no denying that what seemed like an attempt by Clinton-era Democrats (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, et al) to join forces with Petraeus to carry out a kinder, gentler war, had backfired, badly, and the warhawks-turned-vultures, perched and eager to pick the bones of this thing, know it.

There is little solace for the once-anointed king. If anything, it’s that not everyone has abandoned him. There’s always Sen. John McCain, neoconservative stalwart Max Boot,and author Bing West, a former Reagan assistant secretary of defense, who not only offers valuable moral support to Petraeus and his family (he lauds him for stepping down), but makes it clear the ex-general’s legacy is still up for grabs:

What, then, did Gen. Petraeus accomplish that deserves admission to the pantheon of military heroes? The answer is clear: He saved America from an appalling disgrace—the bloody disintegration of Iraq. … His legacy is twofold. As a general, he won a war. As a man, he took responsibility. In his common humanity and his exceptional dedication to his ideals, he showed nobility.
​

Funny, West spent most of last year criticizing COIN in Afghanistan as a futile nation-building exercise that put U.S. troops in harm’s way. He skims over this quickly in his Petraeus encomium, claiming that it “wasn’t his fault.”

Nonetheless, no one thought there would be this much conversation about COIN and Afghanistan after the election and this is a good thing. Too bad it had to happen under such salacious circumstances.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and TAC contributing editor.

The American Conservative: Petraeus’s COIN Gets Flipped

 

[RLENT]

You and Dick "landslide" Morris apparently enjoy the same comical ailment.

Not even close ... but we already know that you and he are soul-brother, Siamese twins ...

He thought Romney would win in a landslide and you actually thought for a longer period of time that Ron Paul would be president.

You are confused - again with the inaccurate observations.

You only know what I actually said - not what I actually thought.

Pretty good tho for a morning laugh.

Yes it is - and thank you for once again providing it.

 

[Turtle]

When you think one thing but say another, that's a slippery slope right there.

 

[muttly]

Yeah ... there couldn't possibly be any other reason that Petraeus ended it ...

Do you notice the difference between my phrasing and your's - regarding who ended it ?

Think about that for a little bit ... and in the meantime I'll tell you a little story:

When my youngest son - who was/is a fairy handsome lad BTW (gets it from his mother ) - was about 15 or 16 or so, he had a young lady who was interested in him. He asked her to a highschool dance and I got the task of picking her up and driving the both of them to the dance.

She was apparently from a somewhat poor family - a fact that was pretty evident when we arrived to pick her up. My son went up to the house, let her know that we were there, and then escorted her back to the car.

I had never met her before and was quite astonished when she got in the car: she was a total goddess ... good for him !

We (wife and I) talked with her on the way to the dance and she accorded herself very well - she seemed like a very nice young lady, quite courteous and well-spoken. Even better ...

Within a week after the dance my son, who is extremely independent, dropped her like a hot potato ... wouldn't even take her calls ... which were numerous ...

Why ?

Waaaay toooo needy and controlling ...

Now ask yourself this ... do Paula Broadwell's actions vis-a-vis her "emails" to Kelly sound to you like someone who is secure in her illicit relationship with Petraeus ?

Or do they sound like someone who has, at some earlier point, gotten the cold shoulder from her lover ... and who now is feeling threatened and is desperately searching for the reason that her lover has changed his attitude towards her ?

If Broadwell's "threatening" emails to Kelly started in May, it is likely (in my estimation) that something was either very seriously amiss, or it was actually over (maybe in all but the formal announcement) in the Broadwell/Petraeus relationship at that point ... or even earlier ...

If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Petraeus - who certainly is not a total idiot - probably came to the conclusion somewhere along the way, that the potential downsides to his conduct were really starting to outweigh the fleeting pleasures ...

IOW: the future was no longer looking so bright that he needed to wear shades ...

Of course, one can postulate a different scenario - one where Broadwell just likes to send threatening emails to some person she doesn't even actually know - who is physically a thousand miles away from her lover - for no real reason, other than that's just how she gets her kicks ...

I don't think your hypothesis really fits regarding Petreaus and Broadwell. As you stated, your son dumped the needy,clingy girl in about a week. He wanted nothing to do with her. Petreaus had this relationship with Broadwell for about a year, and there are reports that it might have been longer extending to when he was in the military. Broadwell appears to be a little unhinged,but most people who get involved with someone like that would end it quite quickly like your son did. My guess is that Petreaus knew early on about Broadwell's emotional state and her needy tendencies,but learned how to deal with it.
AGAIN look at the timeline. They end the relationship in July. The same month as the investigation starts. Just too much of a coincidence to ignore. As soon as he gets wind of the investigation he decides to shut it down, with perhaps some prodding from the FBI. The end result though is THEY end the relationship. I will agree with your statemant though, about Petreaus becoming aware of "potential downsides" of the relationship. He Became fully aware of that when the FBI came knocking on his door sometime in JULY.

 

[davekc]

Not even close ... but we already know that you and he are soul-brother, Siamese twins ...

No need to compare me to him as only you two had the delusional political fantasies. Using your above descriptive observation you would be the poster boy for it. Only difference is his was with Romney and yours with Ron Paul. I've never discussed Morris.

You are confused - again with the inaccurate observations.

You only know what I actually said - not what I actually thought.

Observations are based on what is presented not some goofy thoughts you came up with later.
But still a pretty hilarious statement. I doubt there is a member here that would actually believe that foolishness. Based on your history, I can see why you would say that now. I guess at this point we can all deduct that your rantings are just you blindly typing stupidity while not actually believing it yourself. That explains all the left wing/libertarian blog references.

Yes it is - and thank you for once again providing it.

Your welcome. All I had to do was hit the dave corfman "easy" button.